


The Brilliant Velma Dinkley

by urcool91



Category: Cabin Pressure, Scooby Doo - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Arthur makes everything better, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Sorry for the dark first chapter, Unlikely Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-15
Updated: 2014-05-16
Packaged: 2018-01-24 20:59:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1616900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/urcool91/pseuds/urcool91
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Velma knows she's a failure. Arthur knows she's brilliant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Digging the Rabbit Hole

Velma Dinkley was digging. She scrolled through the mountains of information, eyes dashing to and fro, her head pounding in a pulsing beat at the temples.  _Solveit... Solveit... Solveit..._

"I'm working, I'm working," she muttered. Velma rubbed her forehead even though she knew from experience that it would only make the mantra worse. Looking nervously over her shoulder, she adjusted her old, rectangular glasses once, twice, three times.

A faint whine, like the whistle of a boiling tea kettle, escaped her as she breathed out. The number at the corner of the computer screen said 2:47 am, but she couldn't stop yet. She had to  _Solveit... Solveit... Solveit..._

"Shut up!" she growled, beating her palm against her forehead in the same, ever-present rhythm.  Then she breathed in again, and it felt like she was drowning from the inside out, like a five-ton avail was pressing on her ribs, like her lungs were balloons that had just been popped.

It was the beginning of one of her attacks, the ones she hid from everyone, even the gang. After all, they couldn't go around thinking she was a failure. That would start awkward questions and worried glances, and Velma's life had enough worry in it already. Being the resident genius wasn't easy.

Still, she had no right to be overwhelmed by the contents of her own head. She was the smart one, the one who always solved the crime and caught the criminal. Her mind was supposed to be well-ordered and comprehensive,  an Alexandrian Library of crime and forensics. She couldn't let anyone know that sometimes she half believed the delusions that were obviously all in her head. It simply wasn't possible that the mantra was moving behind her eyes, the pain making them so dry that she could have sworn they cracked and peeled. She was supposed to be a crime-solving machine, not this anxiety-ridden,  emotional, useless piece of _shit._ She was supposed to have all the answers, not feel as though she was blind and deaf and mute, flailing around for something solid that would assure her she was real.

"Calm down, Velma. You can get through this. You've done it before." She had, and that was the worst of it. This case should have been solved, another success story for the Mystery Inc. archives. Instead her traitorous mind was turning it all into an impossible tangle.

Velma felt her breath coming in fast, frantic gasps. She dug her nails into the back of her hand. They scratched from knuckles to wrist again and again, tearing a layer of skin clean off. The sharp pain helped, but not much. She still felt like a too thin thread, stretched and worn down, forced to hold the fragile plane of her genius over the edge of a cliff. Absolutely anything, even just time, could cause that heavy weight to become too much and snap her in two.

"All right, girl,  enough of this pity party," she said into the near silence,  broken only by the whirring of the computer fan. Carefully she uncurled from the tight ball she had created for herself and stuffed her spun-glass emotions back into the too-small box they had poured from. Sitting up, posture impeccable,  she closed the blinds around her soul.

"Stop being such a failure," she whispered almost too low for herself to hear.


	2. The Mock Turtle of Smiles

"Wow, you guys are detectives?" Velma nodded absent-mindedly as she examined the jagged edges of the broken window. "That's brilliant!" She turned to the tall, cheery flight steward who seemed to be almost bouncing with excess excitement. 

"Don't call us brilliant just yet," she said. "I still have no idea how your company's wall chart was stolen  _or_ why on earth someone would steal something so useless."

"It's not my company, it's my mum's," said the steward. "And even if you can't find it, you're still brilliant." Velma froze and bit down on her lip until she tasted blood.

"What?" she said a bit snappishly.  The steward ignored her tone and gave her an even more blinding smile.

"I mean, mostly everyone is brilliant, even clots like me, but you and your friends are extra brilliant," he said. "You go around and solve crimes like... like Miss Marple." Velma was torn between the urge to laugh and the urge to dissolve into a pathetic heap.

"Am I?" she said faintly. 

"Of course!" said the steward. Velma blinked.

"Right," she said, "right. What's your name,  if you don't mind me asking?"

"Oh, right. I'm supposed to introduce myself first.  I'm Arthur," he said. "But I'm not King of the Britons. Just steward of the aeroplane."

"... All right," said Velma. "Um... why are you here?"

"Because Mum wants to know if you want any teas or coffees. We also have some rum from the last stag flight, but she said not to offer you that because it's always a bad idea to hire a drunk detective."

"Coffee, please," said Velma. I was up until 4 am last night doing research for another case."

"Oh, wow. Shouldn't- Shouldn't you be in bed, then?"

"Quite frankly I'd prefer to be," said Velma. "But I do have a job to do, you know."

"Yeah, but you were doing that job last night, right, so shouldn't you take eight hours or so off today to make up for it?"

"The real world doesn't work that way." Arthur's face fell an increment, and Velma felt oddly guilty. But of course, she was stupid. She shouldn't have made him feel bad, the case could depend on it.  _Solveit... Solveit... Solveit..._

"Are you all right?" said Arthur.  Velma jumped slightly,  her arms crossing defensively over her chest.

"Fine, fine. Of course I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be?" Arthur stepped forward a little, his eyebrows scrunched together in... what? Concentration? Concern?

"I don't know," he said. "You just have that look that Mum or Douglas or Skip get when they're trying not to let on that that they're unhappy." Velma glared at him. "I might be wrong though! I'm a bit of a clot, you know. I tend to cotton on when people are sad though. That's when I make them tea or coffee. Oh! That reminds me..." Arthur half ran, half skipped out of the room to get Velma's coffee.  He paused in the doorway and turned around. 

"I've only ever met one person who wasn't absolutely brilliant, " he said, "and that person isn't you." Velma was frozen.  She stared at Arthur with her mouth gaping, trying to take his words in. He just smiled and shrugged. "I thought that you ought to know that." Then he left for Velma's coffee. 

"You must not be looking hard enough," Velma said softly, but somehow the self-hatred didn't bite at her bones as much as usual. She didn't even feel the urge to scratch her nails from knuckles to wrist again and again. 


	3. The Brilliance at the End of the Tunnel

The second time Velma met Arthur Shappey she was walking back to her apartment from the supermarket and it was raining. It wasn't a nice rain either, but a cold rain that invaded clothing and made her wish that she had remembered her gloves. She was trying not to think about the other reason she wished for gloves: the angry red scratch marks that were far too obvious on the back of her left hand. 

A man racing by her collided with her side. Velma stumbled and dropped the bags on the ground. They split right down the middle, turning fruit and milk and eggs into a splatter over the pavement. Tears rushed into Velma's eyes. She was so useless, she couldn't even carry bags right. How the he'll was she supposed to solve crimes if she couldn't even perform basic human functions?

"Sorry, sorry! It's my fault,  I was hurrying for Tolberones and got all clumsy." Velma looked up in disbelief. Her vision was blurred, but that voice was unmistakable. 

"Hey, are you all right? I didn't hurt you or anything,  did I?" said Arthur. 

"N- No," said Velma. She blinked and a few hot tears rolled down her cheeks, clearing her vision a little. Arthur Shappey was kneeling in front of he balled-up figure, looking a bit worried.

"I can pay for the stuff," he said. "Really, I am sorry. Mum's always saying I should slow down and use what little common sense I have to not get into these situations, but they just keep happening." Velma laughed sneakily.

"Sounds like a lovely woman, your mother," she said.

"Oh, Mum's brilliant," said Arthur,  but Velma wasn't listening anymore. She was rapidly slipping into one of her attacks, and she was fighting to not collapse. Her ever-moving hands slipped into a fretful knot that she held close and hard to her stomach. Nails tore from knuckles to wrist again and again and again...

"What are you doing?" A large, cool hand slipped around hers. It felt good over the hot pain of broken skin with occasional beads of blood poking through. "Why're you doing that?" Velma snatched her hand back.

"Piss off," she said, trying to hide the evidence because she was  _just too Damon weak to deal with it all and be what she was supposed to be because she was such a failure and-_

"Breathe." He'd gotten a hold of her hand again. When had that happened? But that wasn't important, what was important was that Arthur's thumb was gently caressing the stinging red lines away and her chest felt like it was about to implode and burst at the same time and a son was being torn from its place right above her heart and- "It's okay to cry." With those four words tears began to flow down her face like dew down a spider's web. 

"I shouldn't," she muttered into Arthur's coat. "I don't deserve- I have no reason to cry. I shouldn't cry like the- the weak failure I am."

"Velma, you're a detective. That's like... well, like the opposite of a failure. And, besides, you're brilliant! You aren't weak, you aren't stupid, and you definitely aren't a failure for crying."

"Then what am I?" said Velma. "I don't feel like- like  _anything._ I'm just a stupid, empty,  useless piece of shit."

"Shut UP!" Velma's eyes snapped up, almost afraid of the intensity in Arthur's voice. "You are a brilliant, beautiful person. No one should talk about you like that, least of all you. You are the smartest, strongest, most brilliant person ever."

"You barely even know me!"

"So? That doesn't change anything. You're brilliant,  and every part of you is brilliant,  and every hair on your head and cell in your body is brilliant. And I don't want you to hurt yourself like you were doing or by saying those horrible lies, because the brilliantness that is you doesn't deserve that. You deserve to be loved, because you are brilliant." Arthur stopped to catch his breath. "And if you can't give yourself the love your brilliantness deserves, I'll do it for you, because you're brilliant."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kept this note to the end, so that anyone who doesn't feel like hearing me get all soppy can skip over it easily. Sorry if I get all emotional here.
> 
> This was an intensely personal, difficult thing for me to do. I really haven't struggled so much to find the right words before, partly because you can't really write all the feelings and physical sensations that come with depression and anxiety and do them justice. But I'm so glad to have been able to write this. Its been a wild year and a half for me, but I feel like, with this down, I can finally start moving on from what's been my most difficult hurdle yet.
> 
> Arthur in this story is the type of person anyone struggling needs in their life: a kind, helpful friend who's there and willing to just remind you that, no matter what you're feeling at the moment, you are brilliant and you are worth something. I've been blessed by so many supporting friends and family members, and without it them I honestly don't know if I'd be writing this right now. So to all of you (you know who you are!) who help others through their low points, I want to thank you for just being there.
> 
> Sorry this is so long. Ciao!


End file.
